𝕠𝕧𝕖𝕣𝕣𝕒𝕥𝕖𝕕 | ℙ𝕒𝕣𝕥 𝟚 𝕠𝕗 ' 𝕙𝕠𝕨 𝕔𝕝𝕚𝕔𝕙𝕖 ' HIATUS

xli

"Are you okay, Harry?" asked Ginny quietly.

"Yeah, I'm fine," said Harry gruffly. The lump in his throat was painful. He did not understand why an Easter egg should have made him feel like this.

"You seem really down lately," Ginny persisted. "You know, I'm sure if you just talked to Cho . . ."

"It's not Cho I want to talk to," said Harry brusquely.

"Who is it, then?" asked Ginny. "I . . ."

He glanced around to make quite sure that nobody was listening; Madam Pince was several shelves away, stamping out a pile of books for a frantic-looking Hannah Abbott.

"I wish I could talk to Sirius," he muttered. "But I know I can't." More to give himself something to do than because he really wanted any, Harry unwrapped his Easter egg, broke off a large bit, and put it into his mouth.

"Come on," said Harry hopelessly. "With Umbridge policing the fires and reading all our mail?"

"The thing about growing up with Fred and George," said Ginny thoughtfully, "is that you sort of start thinking anything's possible if you've got enough nerve."

-

It was later the next day when Fred and George approached Eurielle, Hermione, Ron, and Harry. The four were pouring over pamphlets, all headlined with some clever gimmick to peak the fifth year interests.

" 'Are you seeking a challenging career involving travel, adventure, and substantial, danger-related treasure bonuses? Then consider a position with Gringotts Wizarding Bank, who are currently recruiting CurseBreakers for thrilling opportunities abroad. . . .' " read out Ron.

Eurielle set aside a pamphlet for muggle relations and nodded, " Yeah, my Uncle's been to Brazil, Ghana, Sardinia, Beijing, and a bunch of other places,"

Ron frowned, " Says you need Arithmancy... oi! You and Hermione could do it,"

"I don't much fancy banking," said Hermione vaguely, now immersed in have you got what it takes to train security trolls?

"Hey," said a voice in Harry's ear. He looked around; Fred and George had come to join them. "Ginny's had a word with us about you," said Fred, stretching out his legs on the table in front of them and causing several booklets on careers with the Ministry of Magic to slide off onto the floor. "She says you need to talk to Sirius?"

"What?" said Hermione sharply, freezing with her hand halfway toward picking up make a bang at the department of magical accidents and catastrophes.

"Yeah . . ." said Harry, trying to sound casual, "yeah, I thought I'd like —"

"Have you lost your damn mind," said Eurielle, straightening up and looking at him as though she could not believe her eyes before sending an angry look towards a sheepish Fred, "With Umbridge groping around in the fires and frisking all the owls?"

"Well, we think we can find a way around that," said George, stretching and smiling. "It's a simple matter of causing a diversion. Now, you might have noticed that we have been rather quiet on the mayhem front during the Easter holidays?"

Hemione looked astounded, obviously taking Eurielle's side on this.

"What was the point, we asked ourselves, of disrupting leisure time?" continued Fred, looking directly at Eurielle as a child would while trying to explain to their mother why they weren't in bed when they were supposed to be, "No point at all, we answered ourselves. And of course, we'd have messed up people's studying too, which would be the very last thing we'd want to do."